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The final installment of my Hong Kong 2015 adventure series isn’t in Hong Kong at all, but in Macau! It was a speedy one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong, but it felt like we’d been transported to an entirely different place, ages away from Hong Kong!

I don’t really know what expectations I had about Hong Kong, but I suppose I was expecting it to be all towering skyscrapers and silver, shiny cityscapes. Of course, this was one element of Hong Kong’s landscape, but I was most impressed by the trashy side streets, secluded shrines, and tiny, cluttered shops. There was such a juxtaposition of cultures, times, and traditions; it felt so unreal! A shop stuffed with birds’ nests could be just around the corner from an organic, vegan grocery store; British pubs sat across from dim sum restaurants; ancient temples stood in the shadows of glittering apartment buildings. Not to mention the bamboo scaffolding that covered at least one building on every single block. Hong Kong is a city that seems perpetually under construction, ever expanding.

When I booked our holiday to Hong Kong, I was honestly most excited about the shopping aspect of our trip, and that aspect did not disappoint! There were Topshops (yes, plural!), Marks and Spencers (so many!), and funky Hong Kong-born brands like 2% HK (where I managed to grab some pieces from their Miffy collaboration ♥ON SALE♥) and Ki.La.Ra (which sells Sanrio-licensed clothes for fully-grown adults; I’m not sure if it’s a Hong Kong brand, but I’ve never seen it or heard of it anywhere else.) Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to do much historical or natural sight-seeing, but I’m so happy we did, cuz these places were gorgeous!

Well, I realize I totally missed out on putting up a Christmas post, and now it feels like it’s way too late to even shout “HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!” without looking like a big ol’ weirdo, but life’s been busy! Our hagwon director surprised us with the ever-so-thoughtful Christmas gift of telling us he’d secretly sold his school and was terminating our contracts early (on Christmas-frickin’-Eve!!), so Christmas was spent frantically sending out CVs and feeling totally stressed out and screwed over. Anyway, we’d booked a holiday to Hong Kong earlier in the year, and we did contemplate cancelling it after we’d received this bad news, but I insisted that I NEEDED a vacation, so we went ahead with it anyway (and I’m super happy we did cuz it rocked!)

First things first: DA FOOOOOD! We were shocked by the quantity and quality of vegan food in Hong Kong. I mean, Korea loves its meat, but in Hong Kong we saw all sorts of stomach-churning sights (whole ducks, chickens, and pigs hanging in windows, old ladies selling chicken feet on the street, boxes of shark fins, lizards impaled on sticks, deer fetuses…I mean, I can keep going on if you’d like me to, but I would kinda rather stop!) So, we basically weren’t really expecting to have much luck in finding cruelty-free cuisine, BUT WE WERE SO WRONG!